5 things you can do with the Wii U you don’t want

29 January 2014

By Chris Kemp

So, you bought a Wii U. It’s okay, there are support groups.

In the meantime, I’ve taken it upon myself as a man of the people to help you ease the shame and regret of your woefully misguided purchase, and help you to get some actual use out of the little console that couldn’t.

Since you certainly won’t be using your Wii U for games, here’s 5 things you can use it for.

It makes a great Frisbee

It’s summer! You should be outside. At least that’s what non-nerds tell us, but they seem to have better cholesterol and more attractive physiques (or a “physique” at all), so perhaps we should be listening to them.

That doesn’t mean you can’t take your most prized console with you though, hell no!

Nintendo spent years in a wind tunnel perfecting the aerodynamics of the Wii U Gamepad to fly gracefully through the air, working day and night to make it the perfect size and feel for a spirited game of ultimate Frisbee [citation needed].

Disclaimer: NAG Online and its staff accept no responsibility for any injuries sustained to faces, testicles, children and/or animals in the off-label use of this device.

The lit screen makes for excitingly dangerous night-time play!

It’s compact enough for inappropriate public use

I don’t much like putting headphones in my GamePad, so when I take that badboy on the road to listen to my 50 Shades of Grey audiobook, I like to let everyone else listen to.

It also has an internet browser, which means you can consume all your favourite not-for-children multimedia, provided it’s agreeable enough to not make use of Flash. I could give you my list of Flash-friendly websites of such a nature, if I was into that sort of thing. Which I’m not. Obviously.

Even better, if your name happens to be Kobus Wiese the GamePad will slide conveniently into your jacket pocket.

It makes a fantastic gift for someone you don’t like

Obviously your first instinct would have been to regift the Wii U. But it’s not that easy, is it? All your friends are nerds too, and of course they’d give you that hurt look and ask what they’ve done to deserve it. A Wii U is like a friendship retrenchment package. No go.

But everyone has that cousin. That nephew. That child of the “family friend”. You know the one. Annoying little bastard. The kind that kicks your shins and laughs at you when backs are turned. The kind that tends to single out and “accidentally” break whatever is most precious to you. That annoying little frantic chimpanzee with parents none the wiser. That’s the one.

He’ll know what you’ve done the minute he unwraps it. You’ll give him a cold stare and a slow wink because you know he has to pretend he loves it to keep up the image in front of the parents. And you’ll have won.

Little bastard.

Or you can go with Plan B.

It makes a great TV remote

Did you know the GamePad can be configured to work as a television remote? Neat, huh?

Now whenever you want to change the channel, you can ignore your other, far more compact and easy to operate remotes, and pick up that bulky piece of white plastic that stares deep into your soul and tells you what a failure you are every time you dare to glance at it.

It also makes a great conversation piece when guests are over, even if that conversation is around why you make such terrible decisions.

Channel your regret into something positive

Sure, you can wallow in an ocean of self-pity, and slip off into the darkness like Leonardo di Caprio. I bet if he’d only clambered onto that frikken ENORMOUS door, he might have gotten his Oscar.

Now Leo’s mistake was that he compounded one bad decision with another. You don’t have to do that. Sure, you bought a Wii U, and you can’t take that back.

But you can write a book about it. Many people who have suffered tremendous hardships in their lives have found cathartic release in writing, and perhaps a fat paycheque too. You could set up a workshop, a support group, go on the road giving seminars. One bad decision doesn’t have to define who you are.

Don’t let go of the door and sink into the Atlantic. Or else Nintendo wins. Nintendo gets the door, the enormous diamond and Nintendo frikken remarries and lives longer than a Hobbit. You don’t really want that to happen.

I loved the kid ducktaped to the wall so much. I’ve seen so many pics of people ductaping their drunk friends to stuff; man that must suck.

http://www.mygaming.co.za Chris Kemp

I feel like it’s a personal failure of mine that I haven’t done this to someone yet. Would anyone be willing to let me babysit for a couple of hours?

XCal1bur

xD HAHAHAHAHA

Miklós Szecsei

Fun Fact: I already own more PS4 games than I do Wii U games. I’ve had the Wii U for around 13 months; I’ve had the PS4 for 1.5 months.

http://www.mygaming.co.za Chris Kemp

Wanna meet up for a game of ultimate frisbee?

ToshZA

That’s seriously depressing.

Miklós Szecsei

Yep. The only other game that’s come out that I want to add to my incredible collection of 3 Wii U games is the Wind Waker HD remake.

XCal1bur

Love the article, though I really feel bad for Nintendo and everyone who now regrets their Wii U purchase. I wish Nintendo actually wait for the other two to make their move before they actually do something next time. Sigh I really feel bad for them…

http://www.mygaming.co.za Chris Kemp

I feel bad for the people, but not the company. Crappy marketing, crappy launch titles, delayed first party software, the list goes on. No one screwed up the Wii U except Nintendo themselves, and they’re reaping the rewards of rushing out a product they weren’t properly prepared to support.

XCal1bur

Yeah you are right in that regard, they didn’t think anything over when they created the Wii U.
I really wonder how this will play out in the end, they’ve got a couple beloved IP’s but the Wii U’s lifespan is dwindling by the minute.

http://www.mygaming.co.za Chris Kemp

The scariest thing I think is how they’ve been dumped by basically all the third party developers. Nintendo’s first party stuff has always been the real draw, but the marketing of the games (and, it has to be said, a lot of the games themselves) has/have been so crappy that it’s difficult to get excited about another Mario game when it’s all Titanfall and Destiny and Watch Dogs wherever you look.

XCal1bur

So very very true.

GlassM

What is with all this negativity, I love my Wii U, just as much as my shiny PS4. I have more than 15 great Wii U exclusive games and that exclude downloadable content.

I believe it’s this obsession with better graphics, Nintendo puts game play first .

http://www.mygaming.co.za Chris Kemp

To have gameplay, you have to have games Just kidding, i’m glad you’re enjoying yours – unfortunately most people aren’t :`(

http://dinosaur-signal.tumblr.com/ Miktar Dracon

Hyperbole. Neither you nor I know what “most people” think of the Wii U they own.

What we do know, is how many people bought the Wii U. We also know software attachment rates, and that metric shows that Wii U owners, in general, buy software for it. If they’re buying games for it, one would expect they’re enjoying it. But that’s conjecture.

We don’t know what the people who didn’t buy the Wii U really think, other than a few select opinions and anecdotal views.

http://www.mygaming.co.za Chris Kemp

Well I suppose I could amend it to “it appears that most people aren’t”; but that is the general vibe I’ve gotten rumbling around the interwebs. Of course, the dissatisfied customers are always the most vocal.

I guess you could also say most people aren’t enjoying the console simply because they don’t have one – I’m sure there are a lot of Nintendo fans feeling pretty let down by this generation.

http://dinosaur-signal.tumblr.com/ Miktar Dracon

If you go to any game’s forums, you’d think that game was an abject failure and that nobody sane would ever play such a horrible thing.

It is dangerous, perhaps outright insane, to use the “vibe” one gets from the vocal elements of the internet, to make any kind of assessment of *anything*.

As for self-proclaimed “Nintendo” fans, they’ve not been happy since the NES. I recall newsgroups bemoaning the SNES for the horrible sub-par hardware, the lack of games. Nintendo fans hated the Nintendo 64 because it didn’t have CD-ROM. Nintendo fans hated the Gamecube, and the GBA, and the DS. The Nintendo DS had perhaps the most vocal hatred of all Nintendo consoles in the last two decades, and it ended up being their biggest breadwinner since the Wii.

The Wii, “failed Nintendo fans”, was hated, called the death of Nintendo. And well, history tells that story well enough.

“Favoring the hypothesis” can be fun, but be warned: one’s credibility only goes so far when you do things just for the “lulz” or to pander to what one perceives as popular opinion. I’m not against fluff pieces written to get the hits: but you are what you eat, and what you write. It can come back to bite you in the ass.

http://www.mygaming.co.za Chris Kemp

I’d like to think people can recognise that this was never intended to be “srs bznss journalism” and is written to add ten minutes of entertainment to your Wednesday morning.

It wasn’t really my intention to make a formal assessment of anything; I’m just poking relatively harmless fun at something current and relevant.

I respect your opinion, but I don’t feel like this is written just to get hits or be some kind of easy cash-in on public opinion.

It’s written purely and entirely to be entertaining and get a couple of laughs, and I don’t really have a problem with that. I’d like to think that it has some originality to it as well.

I think when you’re stepping into the realm of opinion pieces intended to be comedic/satirical, you’re allowed a bit of free license when it comes to hyperbole or “favouring the hypothesis”

Quick Edit: I do agree that if you spend too much time on the internet, everybody hates everything

http://dinosaur-signal.tumblr.com/ Miktar Dracon

Yes, it’s obvious this piece was written as fluff humour for entertainment value. Never meant to imply otherwise.

I was simply offering some advice, based on my own experiences having written this exact type of content before, and watching the outcome and impact. That’s all.

http://www.mygaming.co.za Chris Kemp

I guess my hope is that if the Wii U turns out to be a roaring success, someone wouldn’t try and hold this against me

Since it’s not meant to be objective nor projective, I almost feel like the Wii U’s future success is almost irrelevant. It could sell 4 million units over the next 2 months and I wouldn’t feel silly about this article, cause it wasn’t my intention to be taken seriously.

Perhaps that’s naive, I’ll give it and what you said some thought

http://dinosaur-signal.tumblr.com/ Miktar Dracon

So here’s a question though. Why write this about the Wii U, and not the Vita?

The Vita’s been a bigger failure in every way, it’s lost Sony more money than Nintendo has lost with the Wii U, it has less software, third parties abandoned it faster, there is equal if not more public outcry over Sony’s ineptitude, it’s actually sold (in stores, not that anyone’s buying) in ZA whereas the Wii U isn’t (not really, Core Group doesn’t count), and the Vita makes for a far better frisbee.

But Nintendo is the easier target and gets more hits, eh?

http://www.mygaming.co.za Chris Kemp

Haha, I’ve definitely made a lot of fun at Vita over the years, think I’ve written about it in the past, maybe? But you’re right in that it’s not quite the flavour of the week! I can’t help but feel the Vita is almost “old news”, I guess it was just that forgettable. I think we’ve written that one off as a failure, Wii U is our latest thing to tout as a failure

tl;dr Vita is Bieber, Wii U is Miley

I think your frisbee hypothesis is going to require some empirical testing, I’m game

XCal1bur

I have to ask though, how heavy is the Wii U’s gamepad?
All I remember thinking every time I see that thing is how uncomfortable that thing would become after even just a short while playing.

http://www.mygaming.co.za Chris Kemp

Not TOO heavy, but it does feel kind of awkward to me. I like feeling like I’m holding a controller, not a tablet.

XCal1bur

Agreed. I wouldn’t have been happy with that thing at all. Imagine playing 150 hours of skyrim on that thing….my hands would have died.

http://www.mygaming.co.za Chris Kemp

And begged for death long before that

XCal1bur

Well, I can see where you’re coming from, but Sony linking the vita to their PS4 so thoroughly now, bought the Vita a lot more time.
Time is important, but I feel it was still a desperate grab to get more people interested in the Vita.

http://dinosaur-signal.tumblr.com/ Miktar Dracon

I’m not sure RemotePlay is really that much of a boon for the Vita though.

The PSP had RemotePlay with the PS3, and it didn’t help the PSP with struggling sales at all.

RemotePlay also doesn’t address any of the reasons for why the Vita was a failure in the first place, which is high price, insane memory card prices, and lack of software beyond a great launch lineup.

RemotePlay works great in theory too, but in practice it’s shown to be less than realiable. Even when in the same room as the PS4, connecting directly to the PS4, you’re limited to 30fps and a less-than-stable videofeed. Over Wi-Fi or anything lower than a 5MB connection, it’s practically useless.

So I’m not sure RemotePlay does anything for the Vita, other than benig a buzzword that can be thrown around.

XCal1bur

Hmmm, I see your point there.

Randall Rex

Wow, that’s some negative stuff right there but I can totally respect that opinion.
My Wii-U is being delivered in a few days and have already bought about 12 titles for it including; Ninja Gaiden 3: Razors edge,Wonderful 101 and right now I’m looking forward to SSB, Kirby: Triple deluxe, Mario Kart 8, Donkey Kong Country Returns: Tropical Freeze, X, Bayonetta 2, Mighty number 9.
All these could be really great titles. Personally I’m really tired of the derivative and myriad FPS titles out there, the incessant annual COD and FIFA games always on the shelves in stores. I’ve had playstations and xboxes all my life and have grown weary of the target market pigeonholing (apparently pigeonholing is a legit word?lol).
Not to mention the fact that EA has decided to completely forego development for the Wii-U witch I see as a bit of a blessing in disguise to be honest.
The Wii-U might be a commercial failure right now and the entire marketing department needs to be jettisoned but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t great exclusive games for it (if Ninty exclusives are the sort of games you’re into) If I want to play third party games I’ll just fire up my P.C and enjoy the awesomeness of Steam on my budget monster rig.
Sure, the Wii-U isn’t for everyone but that doesn’t mean that it’s for no one at all.
I’m genuinely excited for it. I feel for you because… I once bought a Sony PSP. Worst purchase of my life.
It’s the one time I really felt ‘buyers remorse’ hit home, hard.

http://www.mygaming.co.za Chris Kemp

I think now is definitely a better time to buy. It’s cheaper, and there are some actual titles out there that could be enjoyable. What really killed the console imo is the crappy launch with practically no titles, which means that now third-party developers don’t want to go near it. Nintendo has been abysmally slow in getting their own stuff out as well.

Matthew Fick

I can’t regret buying my Wii U. Because we paid R1000 for it at a recent fire sale. That said, there are only a handful of games I really want for it, but I’m excited about what Nintendo is willing to do to save it.